Healing beyond the grave

The transgenerational healing workshop organised by Life Positive Foundation in Rishikesh was an incredibly healing and empowering experience, says Shivi Verma

Anuradha conducting an intense session at the Rishikesh workshop

When my editor asked me to cover the transgenerational healing workshop organised by Life Positive Foundation in Rishikesh and facilitated by Anuradha aka Usha Ramesh, I was instantly fascinated.

When I met Anuradha at the New Delhi railway station I could not help being impressed by her graceful personality. A full face blessed by radiant skin, hazel eyes and a head full of salt and pepper, hair made her look charming. She moved with poise, and spoke with a sublime confidence revealing her grounding with the concepts of life. She revealed that prior to moving into metaphysics she had been a teacher of math and science, a model, TV personality, and also a dancer.

The day we reached Rishikesh she held an introductory session for the participants.

She clarified that the purpose of human birth was to feel joy, but in general we don’t feel it because we leave parts of us scattered in unresolved relationships. Only by reclaiming these parts can we heal and integrate ourselves, and experience the joy which is our natural state.

“Bring things to a closure. Have no unfinished business with anyone. Leave no emotional charge in any relationship. When you karmically close an account with someone there is no emotional give and take left in that relationship. Repetitive patterns in relationships are unfinished karmic businesses we have with people. Once we identify the blockage and clear them, those patterns disappear.”

Ironically, many times we carry the burden of our ancestors’ unresolved issues. They travel through generations affecting the emotions, relationships and happiness of successive generations. If a person has 20 per cent personal karma, an additional 30 per cent of his unresolved family karma gets added to his account. In Hinduism pitra paksha was meant to cleanse and heal the dead person and his family through rituals. But over time it lost its way and became one more unconscious ritual, thereby defeating the purpose.

Anuradha revcaled that the unbridled flow of love from parent to child made us lead happy, and uncomplicated lives. However, for several reasons the flow gets disrupted.

According to metaphysics there are three healing principles.

Order of love: The flow of unconditional love is from parent to child. Love is unconditional responsibility. It is total acceptance of who you are and an unquestioned approval of your intentions.

We cannot be flawed as people. If we exist, we are valid as people. Who we are serves a purpose. All our intentions have unconditional sanction and approval from the Source.

There are only two valid sources of such love. God and our parents. But parents too have limitations, and circumstances can impede the flow of such love from parent to child.

This flow gets disrupted if the order is reversed. Many times the father dies an early death, forcing the elder son to play the role of a caregiver to his mother and siblings. In such cases, the child has not received any love from his parents to give to his children. The nature of love is to flow from top to down. It does not work backwards. This disrupted order continues through generations until it is healed and the logical order is restored.

If somewhere in the family tree a person was rejected, then future generations have a person who would have hidden loyalties towards the rejected person. He or she could have self-destructive tendencies, or be a cause for concern for others.

As parents we often assume that we have the right to decide our child’s life. But our children have the right to make their decisions, and we have no rights in this matter. Our job is to give them unconditional love and approval. If we have a problem with their decisions, we need to resolve it and not impose our expectations on our children. Citing her own example, she said that she was shocked and worried when her son decided to drop out of his media course, and start learning music. She felt that he was whimsical, and had no regard for the time and money she and her husband had spent on him. Then she recalled that her resentment sprung from the fact that she herself had given up the idea of majoring in dance, and instead studied Math because her father wanted her to. Had she been able to follow her true calling she would not be resenting the change in her son’s choice.

We must distinguish between what is our business and what is not. Many times people have suffered needlessly because they meddled in what was not their business. There are things which are God’s business, for example, incidents lying out of our personal ambit. What others do with their lives is their business, and your own life and what you do with it is your business. “Once during a session I met a man who had suicidal tendencies. It turned out that four generations ago a lady in his family had committed suicide because a neighbour had gossiped that she used to meet a man every day after her husband left town. Although that man was her brother, the woman could not bear the allegation and hanged herself. The spirit of the man who had gossiped about her was invited and he begged forgiveness from that woman. After that the boy’s suicidal tendencies vanished.”

Even miscarriages and abortions leave a karmic imprint. Anuradha said that each time a soul decides to be born and is unable to, it leaves its sorrowful imprints inside the womb. If the unborn soul’s value and existence is not recognised, then its karmic exchange with parents is not closed. The energies of the unborn child get carried and coming children carry a death urge. The surviving children should know their place in the family, and also how many died before their birth. Being unrecognized and unacknowledged is the greatest suffering one could undergo. “I used to feel that life was futile and not worth living for a long time. I later came to know that my mother had had a miscarriage and that I was the second born. I ritualistically sought forgiveness from the unborn for not being acknowledged. and since then those heavy feelings never visited me,” Anuradha revealed.

The next morning the workshop began in full swing.

She asked the participants who were sitting in a circle to go into meditation and invite the spirit of ancestors to come and participate in the healing.

Then she picked up a participant and took her to a corner to learn about her challenge in private.

Emotions flowed freely during the healing sessions

The other participants were kept in the dark about the issue facing the person. After knowing the problem and its possible roots in the family line, she intuitively selected a few participants to take some specific positions inside the circle. Surprisingly, no sooner would the participants enter the ring and stand where she directed them, than they would start channelling energies, and experiencing inexplicable symptoms and emotions.

An elderly lady turned as stiff as a stone the moment she took her position. “I don’t know what is happening to me. I can’t move,” she exclaimed. Immediately, a tall lady positioned in front of her began to channel the feelings of remorse. Sobbing, she began asking for forgiveness. Soon, another delegate was brought in and made to stand behind the remorseful lady and put his hand on the woman’s shoulder. She began to feel better. He began to have fatherly emotions for the sobbing lady. On Anuradha’s behest he promised to give her his unconditional love, and apologised for having loved her conditionally. Next, Anuradha made the tall lady utter soothing words to the stiff-as-stone lady. Suddenly, her stiffness left her and she began to smile. Both women felt a surge of positive emotions, and hugged each other. Then the person whose healing was being done was called, and the tall lady was made to say that she gives her child all her unconditional love, coming to her from her ancestors. Tears of love and acceptance were shed and the lady being healed looked as if she had attained her much-longed-for desire. Everyone in the circle felt their eyes welling up.

Anuradha then asked the participants to go back to their seats. The group then asked the assembled energies and entities to return to where they came from. Then she revealed the sequence. The client had felt unloved by her father which had pained her a lot. The stiff-as-stone lady was playing her mother, and the tall lady was playing her father. The man was playing the tall lady’s father. The client’s father had complaints about his own father, who was not available to him emotionally. He was therefore emotionally distant from his wife and daughter. When his father sought forgiveness, he healed, and naturally began to feel remorse and affection for his ignored wife and daughter.

To keep the proceedings authentic, so that there was no chance of participants faking emotions and energies, Anuradha would often make people represent opposite genders. They were not made privy to the actual story. Once, I was called to play a part and I began to feel fatherly emotions. Only later did I realise that I was playing the father of the girl whose healing was being done.

A lady who had flown from the USA to participate in the workshop was surprised to find that the flow of unconditional love from parent to child had got obstructed in the sixth generation before her. Anuradha had to call in an emotionally healthy mother from the seventh generation to start the flow of love to receptive children/parents. Despite not knowing the actual story, when called to play a part, participants felt emotions of guilt, anger, blame, accusation, catharsis, love, reunion, forgiveness and what not. Many times when a person in the act could not be pacified, another person representing fate would be called who would take the blame upon itself and help in relieving frayed emotions. Often the energies being channelled were so intense that people would start feeling pain in the neck, shoulder, stomach or head. A young girl who had come from Hyderabad was so energy sensitive that often she would get thrown back meters away from a person she supposedly had an issue with during the act.

Many people participating in the healing of others found themselves healed, because the act of channelling intense emotions brought up their own issues to the surface, and helped them heal and release them.

Many important learnings also came our way. In a session where a woman’s mother was unable to give her love, it was discovered that as a social worker during the Partition of India she had been unable to bear the agonies and sufferings of the migrating masses and had frozen emotionally to block off the pain. This made her frigid towards her own children. Anuradha asked people to not personalise everything bad or negative happening before them where they were not personally involved. “For everything that happens there is a valid reason. Even though you may not be aware of it. So if you are not directly related to certain incidents, please take care to see that you do not add their emotional charge to your system. If possible, send a prayer, and move on with your life. Don’t internalise them and let them affect your thoughts.”

Answering a question on children abandoning and neglecting their old parents, she said that such parents had created a distance between themselves and their children.

The healing sessions created such positive synergy among participants as they played each other’s parents, spouses and children that it opened channels of free flowing love, and acceptance for each other. A lady who played my mother felt such a gush of love for me and I for her, that even after the closure of the workshop we kept experiencing the same feeling and became inseparable.

That a person’s soul or spirit can be at two different places at the same time, was proved indisputably in the workshop. In my own healing, a girl who was playing me began to report the same sensations, emotions and physical symptoms as I have. The power of thought, intent, the pervasiveness of the human mind and body became crystal clear.

Said Indu Nath from Dehradun, “This was my first workshop. I felt at peace and at home and gelled very well with everyone. I am taking back a sense of completion. I feel at ease with myself.”